Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City by Robert Gottlieb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Robert Gottlieb considers the city of Los Angeles as the parable of the modern city. The dilemma as he draws it has to do with the conflicting social changes of technology and globalization on the cultural and natural ecologies of the city. Taking Los Angeles as a model, Gottlieb includes an astounding amount of information about Los Angeles in how it developed, changes historically and comes to embody the mixed bag of tricks it is. As a native Angelino I was fascinated by Gottliebs take on the politics and inner struggles of its class, racial and resource management groups.
The weakest part of the book is that Gottlieb splits the conclusion as a non-conclusion. His chapters are fairly strong as he picks certain events to highlight recent developments in the life of the city, particularly with the neighborhood struggles of Latinos. He isn’t however, able to cohere these into one unified vision for what Los Angeles has to overcome. When you contrast this with the strength of his understanding of the ecological struggle (anti-polluters who want to stop people from pollution vs preservationists who want to create more green spaces) you begin to get a grasp of the larger trends that characterize the struggle. When it comes to immigration, gentrification and economics, Gottlieb is a little less insightful and more “just quoting the facts”. In a way, Gottlieb could buffer this area more if he were to introduce a theoretical cut on culture the way he did on ecology.
Additionally, with recent developments in the last 5-10 years, this book could also be updated. The influx of globalization with the housing bubble crash has really hurt working class and middle class families as they are being forced out of the real estate market by outsider money. This added struggle can also help characterize the way in which large cities with their governance and their political cartels allow certain trends to develop.
All in all, not a difficult book to read. But one that was insightful. Much better than some of the other hodge podge urban studies texts that I have examined.
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